CLEP Introductory Sociology key terms

The ability to connect personal troubles to larger public issues by seeing how individual lives are shaped by historical and social forces outside the person.

The relatively stable pattern of relationships, roles, and institutions that organizes how people interact and distributes opportunities and constraints across a society.

The intended, recognized purpose that a social practice or institution is designed to serve, such as schools teaching reading and arithmetic.

An unintended or unrecognized consequence of a social practice or institution, such as schools providing childcare or forming peer networks.

A perspective holding that society is composed of groups competing for scarce resources, and that institutions and norms tend to serve the interests of dominant groups.

A micro-level perspective arguing that people act toward things based on the meanings those things carry, and that meaning is created and revised through social interaction.

An approach that examines how gender organizes social life and how power imbalances between genders shape institutions, opportunities, and everyday interaction.

The process by which people collectively define something as real or meaningful through shared interaction, so that its significance depends on social agreement rather than physical fact.

A condition in which social norms are weak, unclear, or conflicting, leaving people without reliable guidance for behavior and increasing feelings of disconnection.

An established and enduring set of norms, roles, and organizational arrangements centered on a major social need, such as the family, education, religion, or the economy.

A formal organization characterized by a clear hierarchy of authority, written rules, defined duties, and impersonal treatment of clients and employees.

The unofficial lessons schools transmit through routine practices, such as punctuality, obedience to authority, and competition, beyond the formal academic subjects taught.

The practice of sorting students into separate instructional groups or course sequences based on perceived ability, which can shape later educational and occupational outcomes.

The historical decline in the social authority and influence of religion, as other institutions such as science and the state take over functions religion once performed.

The network of social relationships based on descent, marriage, or adoption that defines family membership and carries obligations, rights, and expectations.

The process by which conditions once understood as personal, moral, or behavioral problems come to be defined and treated as medical issues.

A socially defined position a person occupies in a group or society, carrying expectations about how the occupant should behave and be treated.

The set of behaviors, rights, and obligations expected of someone occupying a particular social status, such as parent, employee, or student.

The strain that arises when the demands of two or more statuses a person holds make incompatible claims on the same time or resources.

A shared expectation about appropriate behavior in a given situation, ranging from everyday customs to strongly enforced rules backed by serious sanctions.

A reward or punishment used by a group to encourage conformity to norms, such as praise, promotion, ridicule, or exclusion.

The mechanisms through which a society encourages conformity and discourages deviance, including informal pressures like disapproval and formal systems like law and policing.

Behavior that violates significant social norms and therefore draws, or could draw, negative reaction from others in the group.

The view that deviance is not simply an act but a status applied by others, so that being publicly labeled deviant can reshape a person's identity and future behavior.

The socially constructed expectations, roles, and identities associated with being male, female, or another category, distinct from biological sex characteristics.

The lifelong process through which people learn the norms, values, skills, and identities appropriate to their society and social positions.

The people, groups, and institutions that transmit norms and values and shape identity, including family, peers, schools, and mass media.

The process of unlearning established norms and identities and learning new ones, often occurring when a person enters a setting such as military training or a total institution.

Movement of individuals or groups between positions in a stratification system, either upward or downward and either within one lifetime or across generations.

Relatively spontaneous and unstructured activity by a group, such as a crowd, fad, panic, or rumor, that is not guided by established institutional norms.

An organized, sustained effort by a group to promote or resist change in some aspect of society, often using collective action outside normal institutional channels.

A significant alteration over time in the patterns of behavior, culture, and social structure of a society, driven by factors such as technology, conflict, and population shifts.

The ranking of people into hierarchical layers that give unequal access to valued resources such as wealth, power, and prestige.

A broad grouping of people who share similar economic resources, occupations, and life chances, and who tend to transmit their position to their children.

A combined measure of a person's or family's position based on income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige.

A stratification system in which social position is fixed at birth, membership is closed, and marriage and contact across groups are strongly restricted.

The processes through which social inequalities and class positions are passed from one generation to the next, often through schooling, family resources, and networks.

An income threshold set by government used to determine whether a household's resources are insufficient to meet basic needs, and thus who counts as poor.

The idea that overlapping social categories such as race, class, and gender combine to produce distinct experiences of advantage and disadvantage that cannot be understood separately.